"Crypto's Q1 Surge: $23M in Web3, RWA, and Gaming Investments"

Investors in the crypto market have shown a strong interest in decentralized infrastructure, Web3 gaming, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, as indicated by the surge in investments in these areas during Q1 2025. Despite the market's volatility, venture capitalists have continued to deploy capital in blockchain and crypto startups, focusing on key verticals with immense growth potential.

Alchemy, a leading blockchain developer platform, launched a $5 million Web3 Adoption Fund to accelerate Web3 adoption on Ethereum. The fund will provide developers with gasoline and computing credits, lowering the barrier to entry for new initiatives. Alchemy's commitment to supporting developers is evident in its collaboration with World, a biometric digital identity project, which has already reached over 23 million worldwide users.

Mavryk Dynamics, a developer of a cutting-edge layer-1 RWA network, secured $5 million in funding, signaling strong investor confidence in the future of real-world asset tokenization. Mavryk's platform aims to connect traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) by providing non-custodial features, such as a protocol treasury, grants, and liquidity mining. The company has already secured over $360 million in RWAs, demonstrating the growing appetite for on-chain representation of real-world assets.

Rho Labs, the developer of Rho Protocol, a decentralized rates exchange, closed a $4 million seed round. Rho's protocol enables a normalization of funding and forward rates between centralized finance (CeFi) and DeFi, filling a gap in the financial world and making it more collaborative and efficient. The company has processed over $7 billion in notional volumes, indicating strong user adoption and increasing demand for its service.

The Teneo Protocol, a DePIN project aiming to democratize social media data access, secured a $3 million seed round. Powered by the layer-1 network Peaq, Teneo runs a Web3 browser extension that rewards users for maintaining its data network. With over 3.5 million users in 191 countries, Teneo is opening new opportunities for ownership and participation in data, and rewarding users for their contributions.

Fluent Labs, an Ethereum layer-2 developer, raised $8 million in a funding round led by Polychain Capital. Fluent Labs presents itself as a "blended execution